Heresy 189

[shizett]

12 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

I have my suspicions that the iron is used as a ward against spirits/wind magic in general. I think the same thing is true with bronze, only it protects from blood magic. Think of the Royce armor or the bronze knife used by MMD on Drogo's horse, etc.

very interesting.

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

And by that same token Craster's boys are still fundamentally human.

are they? Whatever they were at some point, now they are just the binding of a spell.

28 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Mel has guest right at the Wall, so she may be able to move about freely.

But didn't they pass the wall at some point to come to the rescue? They weren't yet guests then.

[Tucu]

3 minutes ago, shizett said:

But didn't they pass the wall at some point to come to the rescue? They weren't yet guests then.

They crossed at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, I assume with permission from Cotter Pyke.

There seems to be loopholes around death or ice creatures crossing the Wall. The Night's King had her corpse/WW queen living in the Nightfort and the "the thing that came in the night" and his thralls operated freely there too.

[Black Crow]

50 minutes ago, shizett said:

On 27/07/2016 at 4:43 AM, wolfmaid7 said:
IMO i think it has to do with the "human" shell affording some kind of protection and cloak.Mel and the wights were human on the outside,though they had each payloads to deliver.But to me what's inside them the incorporeal and disembodied entity can't pass.

... But then we have cold hands and wights who seem to be unable to move beneath the wall which makes it all seem inconsistent.

I'm very much of the opinion that its inconsistent not because we can't figure out what's really going on but because GRRM has declined to set out rules of magic, because that would reduce it to a mechanical process, and exploits that anarchy to allow certain things to happen as and when he requires them to happen without regard to consistency or precedent.

[Black Crow]

16 minutes ago, shizett said:

 

are they? Whatever they were at some point, now they are just the binding of a spell.

 

And so too, I would argue, are Mel, Moqorro and probably Victarion - albeit he is oblivious.

[Black Crow]

8 minutes ago, Tucu said:

They crossed at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, I assume with permission from Cotter Pyke.

There seems to be loopholes around death or ice creatures crossing the Wall. The Night's King had her corpse/WW queen living in the Nightfort and the "the thing that came in the night" and his thralls operated freely there too.

As to the first, given that they came by sea they may well have simply landed on the beach north of the Wall.

As to the second I refer to the answer I just gave to Shizett

[Tucu]

22 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

As to the first, given that they came by sea they may well have simply landed on the beach north of the Wall.

As to the second I refer to the answer I just gave to Shizett

The port in south of the Wall, I would make sense to land there unless they knew of a natural port north of the Wall. War galleys, cogs, drommonds and similar ships can't do amphibious landings.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, shizett said:

this is so interesting to me. Do you think she avoids sleep because BR could infiltrate her dream?

I'm not sure what she means, but she calls sleep 'the little death'.  This may have something to do with a recurring dream of her transformation as a slave girl to red priestess.

aDwD: Melisandre

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

But I also suspect that her dreams can be invaded by the Ancient Enemy.  The same with Tyrion who avoids sleeping unless he can drink himself to oblivion and Bran who Maester Luwin gives sleeping draughts because the whole castle can hear him screaming in his sleep. 

 

[Dornish Neck Tie]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

I'm very much of the opinion that its inconsistent not because we can't figure out what's really going on but because GRRM has declined to set out rules of magic, because that would reduce it to a mechanical process, and exploits that anarchy to allow certain things to happen as and when he requires them to happen without regard to consistency or precedent.

There may be a magical answer for why the undead can't simply go around the Wall that doesn't get too specific, if we assume that the hordes of the undead are at least indirectly products of weirwood magic (seems most of us do). Might the seas set a barrier for the weirwood network's sphere of influence? We likely don't need to know why or how, just know that the sea is where a greenseer's reach ends.

BranVras noted that the glass candles, which can be viewed as "counters" to greenseer vision, can see across seas, deserts, and mountains, according to Marwyn. Left out are the forests and marshes, where the CotF reside. The weirwoods hold sway wherever the roots can survive, and the glass candles light the way through the remaining darkness.

[Black Crow]

Given the physical limitations of the wights we see in the books I rather doubt they could swim and would most likely be simply tossed about and scattered by the waves. I also have my doubts about them coming any distance by land with or without the complication of the Wall. The North, we're frequently told is a vast area and far from populous. While I'm confident that the Wild Hunt will cross the Wall by one means or another I'd expect them to raise an army of the slain as and when required rather than restrict themselves to the snail-like pace of the shuffling dead.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I'm not sure what she means, but she calls sleep 'the little death'.  This may have something to do with a recurring dream of her transformation as a slave girl to red priestess.

aDwD: Melisandre

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

But I also suspect that her dreams can be invaded by the Ancient Enemy.  The same with Tyrion who avoids sleeping unless he can drink himself to oblivion and Bran who Maester Luwin gives sleeping draughts because the whole castle can hear him screaming in his sleep. 

 

Don't have my copy of ADwD to hand but my recollection is that she looks forward to when she will no longer need to sleep, but doesn't cite a trigger for this, so it may simply be a matter of her transformation not yet being complete, ie the final loss of humanity as she becomes fire made flesh.

[Sinbold]

9 hours ago, LynnS said:

The Mirri Maz Duur quote! 

- when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, (when time runs backwards)

- when the seas dry up (when the Narrow Sea is absorbed into an ice pack)

- when mountains blow in the wind like leaves (when the horn of Joramun blows and the Wall swirls away in a cloud of ice crystals)

I like it!!

My take on the MMD prophecy:  " when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East" refers to Quentin Martell going from Dorne where he was born, to meet his death by dragon fire.  "Sun" = "son" here.  Symbol of Dorne/House Martell is a sun with a spear through it.

"When the seas go dry" just happened in the show.  The "sea" is the Dothraki Sea, and once Dany takes all the Dothraki to Westeros, there will be no more Dothraki in the Dothraki Sea.  Hence, that "sea" goes "dry".

"When mountains blow in the wind like leaves," I believe refers to either The Mountain, in the form of Robert Strong, or both The Mountain and his little brother Sandor, dying at some point in the future.  Then when all three of these have happened, Dany's womb will quicken and she'll bear a living child.  But that's how she will be able to be with Drogo again, meaning she will die in childbirth.

Make sense?

[Dornish Neck Tie]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Given the physical limitations of the wights we see in the books I rather doubt they could swim and would most likely be simply tossed about and scattered by the waves. I also have my doubts about them coming any distance by land with or without the complication of the Wall. The North, we're frequently told is a vast area and far from populous. While I'm confident that the Wild Hunt will cross the Wall by one means or another I'd expect them to raise an army of the slain as and when required rather than restrict themselves to the snail-like pace of the shuffling dead.

[ravenous reader]

11 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

the ouroboros or dragon eating it's own tail which I believe is a theme in this series. The description of the dragon eating it's own tail in an endless circle also caused me to think of it going inside out for a cycle before returning to right side out. Because there are so many inversions I think this inside out reversal is a better way to explain how everything has gotten so inverted. If the dragon is inside out, then the Wall isn't drawing upon itself any longer, it may be expelling the cold.

Since you referred me to your essays on the 'wheel of time' when I first encountered your writing on the Euron Abomination thread, I've read a few of them and must say your ideas are most compelling! Although lacking in the depth of asoiaf lore over which you hold sway, which means I am unfortunately not able to add much to that conversation, I just wanted you to know I enjoyed reading your ideas, even though I wasn't always able to follow your leaps and bounds through time.  

A thought of yours on the Bran the Builder time-travel thread recently struck me, in line with what you've suggested here about the dragon uncoiling, that we should not think in terms of time in your schematic theme as reversing so much as 'unraveling.' Would you care to explain/expound on what you meant by this concept of 'unraveling' vs. reversal in general, and how it might apply to this thread (pun intended) in particular?

While delightful and profound, the archetypal image of the ouroboros is problematic in that its use as a diagram of history still deceptively presents time as a linear head-to-tail arrangement, regardless of whom eats whom, with everything inbetween in its 'proper' sequence on the 'body', no matter in which direction you spin it.  With the insinuation of the Bran time-travel stuff, however, we might now have to factor in a picture of an ouroboros that can coil upon itself (much as a higher-order molecule emerges from what was once a linear sequence) and tie itself in knots, so that for example two sites on the 'body' that were previously unrelated in space and time to one another might now paradoxically be adjacent.

Your phrase which I've bolded 'going inside out for a cycle before returning to right side out' got me thinking that if GRRM's fable of ice and fire is an allegory for climate change, geophysical shifts, astronomical events like meteor impacts, mass extinctions and the like, as many have suggested, then perhaps the analogous 'unravelling' of the ward at the wall in 'real-world' nature might refer to the periodic geomagnetic reversals that have been shown to occur over time resulting in a polar reversal, i.e. a shift in the earth's polar axis, whereby in magnetic terms north becomes south, and east becomes west...

Spending time on Seams puns and wordplay thread, among others, has heightened my awareness of, and correspondingly lowered my threshold for, identifying GRRM's sneaky use of these allusive techniques.  So, with this in mind, could 'magic' be a pun on 'magnetic'?  

Moreover, extreme shifts in the earth's magnetic field have been speculatively linked to climate shifts like glaciation, cosmic impacts and other catastrophic events, including volcanic hyperactivity ('the Doom?'), although the evidence for a 'doomsday' scenario in this context outside literature seems far from definitive. Despite inconclusive evidence for a causal link of this kind, the phenomenon of geomagnetic reversal has ignited the popular imagination, particularly considering its frequency appears to be increasing when viewed in a deep-time perspective, sparking an inevitable interest in doomsday hypotheses, particularly in the sci-fi community with which GRRM would have been au fait.  

A geomagnetic reversal does not occur as a straight flip, but rather as an unraveling in fits and starts which can be quite unpredictable and unstable, as one writer put it:

Quote

Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process. Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in "recent" years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years.

...


Another doomsday hypothesis about a geomagnetic flip plays up fears about incoming solar activity. This suggestion mistakenly assumes that a pole reversal would momentarily leave Earth without the magnetic field that protects us from solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun. But, while Earth's magnetic field can indeed weaken and strengthen over time, there is no indication that it has ever disappeared completely. A weaker field would certainly lead to a small increase in solar radiation on Earth – as well as a beautiful display of aurora at lower latitudes - but nothing deadly. Moreover, even with a weakened magnetic field, Earth's thick atmosphere also offers protection against the sun's incoming particles.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html

'Fears of incoming solar activity' in the face of a compromised wall mirrors fictional fears of incoming Wildling or Other activity!

'Multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes' certainly would describe some of what I've read in your own theories...(or maybe that was just the effect on my brain!)

Within this paradigm, the analogy to the 'Wall' holding back 'the Others' would be the earth's magnetic field which serves as a shield, protecting against solar radiation and atmospheric depletion. Apparently, there is some evidence that the magnetic field is weakening, which is some cause for concern:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Earth_s_magnetic_heartbeat

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

Your explanation as to how the Wall was built is fantastic, but if it's destined to disintegrate into a swirl of snow, then something has happened to reverse the magic that went into it's building. That is why I think the ouroboros is inside out. The Wall is expelling or exhaling as evidenced by the blizzard in the north and why it seems to be emanating out of Winterfell. Many suspect that the Winterfell crypts lead to tunnels underground and maybe the iron gate below has been opened?

According to the geomagnetic shift/polar reversal analogy, the earth's magnetic field is generated by the earth's dynamic iron core, so a shift thereof which can be construed as a symbolic 'opening'/'unlocking' could indeed be configured as an 'iron gate' swinging down below!  Magnetism derives from, and is held in place by an iron foundation (although this is paradoxically always in flux). Wildly extrapolating, perhaps GRRM's concept of magic like magnetism hinges on iron!  After all, iron swords, like compass needles, are used as wards on tombs to ensure the proper alignment between the cardinal polarities of the living and the dead.  Your focus on the 'Ironborn' as the civilization on the ascendance is interesting, in light of the mag(net)ic iron connection.  Is there some significance to their name?

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I still rather see the fall of the Wall not as a mighty crash and a bang but swirling away in a cloud of ice crystals - as Ser Puddles flesh and blood did

The Mirri Maz Duur quote! 

- when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, (when time runs backwards)

- when the seas dry up (when the Narrow Sea is absorbed into an ice pack)

- when mountains blow in the wind like leaves (when the horn of Joramun blows and the Wall swirls away in a cloud of ice crystals)

I like the E-W spinning in reverse as a time reversal idea!  According to the geomagnetic shift analogy I explored above, however, neither time nor the earth need run backwards; all you need is a polar reversal, and strange phenomena start popping up in unlikely places, e.g. one might see the aurora in the tropics.

Regarding the 'seas drying up', this has happened before in geological time when so-called 'land bridges' were created (in an ice age, water becomes locked up in ice, leaving some areas relatively in drought), which many theorize facilitated human migration across land masses that were previously separated. It's interesting to think that 'when the seas dry up,' and humanity is in extremis, paradoxically people are brought together, geographically speaking at least: bridges replace walls..!

[Brad Stark]

I've always assumed wights and Others cannot cross water.  The wall wouldn't work if you could just go around.  Not much water in the bottom of the Gorge, but if that doesn't stop them, what good is the wall?

My take on the Mirri Maz Duur prophecy has simply been that Daenerys either can't more kids, or at least Mirri Maz Duur believes she won't.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Sinbold said:

My take on the MMD prophecy:  " when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East" refers to Quentin Martell going from Dorne where he was born, to meet his death by dragon fire.  "Sun" = "son" here.  Symbol of Dorne/House Martell is a sun with a spear through it.

"When the seas go dry" just happened in the show.  The "sea" is the Dothraki Sea, and once Dany takes all the Dothraki to Westeros, there will be no more Dothraki in the Dothraki Sea.  Hence, that "sea" goes "dry".

"When mountains blow in the wind like leaves," I believe refers to either The Mountain, in the form of Robert Strong, or both The Mountain and his little brother Sandor, dying at some point in the future.  Then when all three of these have happened, Dany's womb will quicken and she'll bear a living child.  But that's how she will be able to be with Drogo again, meaning she will die in childbirth.

Make sense?

Hello Sinbold,  Thank you for reading my post.  That was my take at first also or as Brad Stark says; boy that's impossible; the sun is never going to do that.  So it's impossible, Dany is never having another child.  It really depends on how you frame prophecies.   If you agree that prophecy can be about event past, present and future; then consider actually seeing the sun moving backwards through the sky.  We see this in cinema all the time to represent days passing very quickly one sun rise after another or representing the passage of time.  A sunrise running in reverse would represent time moving backwards.  Think about running a time lapse film backwards and watching a tree sprout and grow in front of your eyes and reverse it to see the tree shrink back to the acorn.  We already have an example of this in Clash of King:

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had is brother always had three eyes?

Not always came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This occurs at the Fist of the First Men when weirBran talks to Jon in his Ghost dream.  This is before Bran has passed the Black Gate.  Jon and Bran encounter each other again after Jon and the Wildlings climb the Wall and Bran see him through Summer make his escape from the Wildlings back to Castle Black syncing up their timelines.  So wierBan communicated with Jon before he reached Bloodraven's cave,  in Bran's future and Jon's past.

I think Dany is due for another set of prophecies or visions when she reaches the Dothraki High Holy place and passes beneath the Shadow of the Mother of Mountains.  She may have a vision of the past, she might see the Wall built, the seas emptying to make a glacier in a reverse time lapse.  

That is my interpretation of the first two lines of that prophecy.  

Thanks for reading!

   

 

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

I like the E-W spinning in reverse as a time reversal idea!  According to the geomagnetic shift analogy I explored above, however, neither time nor the earth need run backwards; all you need is a polar reversal, and strange phenomena start popping up in unlikely places, e.g. one might see the aurora in the tropics.

Regarding the 'seas drying up', this has happened before in geological time when so-called 'land bridges' were created (in an ice age, water becomes locked up in ice, leaving some areas relatively in drought), which many theorize facilitated human migration across land masses that were previously separated. It's interesting to think that 'when the seas dry up,' and humanity is in extremis, paradoxically people are brought together, geographically speaking at least: bridges replace walls..

Thank you.  I think this is information we'll get in the form of a vision.  It also could suggest that the Hammer of the Waters didn't require a comet or calling up the oceans to inundate the land; but breaking the ice dams blocking large glacial lakes instead.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Since you referred me to your essays on the 'wheel of time' when I first encountered your writing on the Euron Abomination thread, I've read a few of them and must say your ideas are most compelling! Although lacking in the depth of asoiaf lore over which you hold sway, which means I am unfortunately not able to add much to that conversation, I just wanted you to know I enjoyed reading your ideas, even though I wasn't always able to follow your leaps and bounds through time.  

I am flattered that you have read my ideas and have taken the time to present actual scientific evidence to support it, and I thank you for it! 

I have been working on the wheel of time project for the last six months and it continues to evolve as new evidence or interpretations emerge. I am standing on the shoulders of many people who's ideas struck a chord with me along with the many discussions on this forum and elsewhere. I have to thank min most of all, known as LynnS on Westeros with whom I have had lengthy discussions over on our other forum The House of Black and White. Her new ideas on how the Wall was built has led to some changes in how I think the ouroboros is working.

I do have difficulty communicating my ideas, because you are right I "leap" and "bound" while posting and don't fully explain sometimes. I forget that not everyone has been following since the very beginning, but if I explained everything, my posts would be extremely long!

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

A thought of yours on the Bran the Builder time-travel thread recently struck me, in line with what you've suggested here about the dragon uncoiling, that we should not think in terms of time in your schematic theme as reversing so much as 'unraveling.' Would you care to explain/expound on what you meant by this concept of 'unraveling' vs. reversal in general, and how it might apply to this thread (pun intended) in particular?

Yes, I do think time is moving in reverse, or unraveling as you describe, but in my mind turning inside out would also explain the reversal, but it could also pass other events out of order as you've suggested. That's not anything I had thought of before, but it does make sense.

Try to imagine a long knee-high sock (heh) with the Dawn of Age at the toe and Drogo's funeral pyre close to the edge of the sock near the knee. Now peel it down so that the inside of the sock is slowly unrolling over the top of the outside. It's a poor example since the ouroboros is an unbroken circle, a dragon eating it's own tail, but if a dragon could shed it's skin like a snake, it could peel backwards over itself. 

I've gone back and forth over the cause of the reversal of time. At first I thought Euron removed or unraveled a warded hinge. He is a failed apprentice of the 3EC and he has motive. Add to that Aeron Damphair's terrifying but undescribed memory of a squeaky iron hinge associated with Euron and it seems implied that he changed, removed, or opened an iron ward somewhere. Then I thought maybe Bran did it, but he would have to go back in time to do it. There's a few times people have noticed burned trees and Weasel Pie had a compelling theory that there are burnt places where lightning has struck where Bran has entered the past. Then there's also the idea that this is a normal cycle, much like the Mayans have ages separated into smaller sections and then a number of smaller sections adding up to a larger cycle.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

While delightful and profound, the archetypal image of the ouroboros is problematic in that its use as a diagram of history still deceptively presents time as a linear head-to-tail arrangement, regardless of whom eats whom, with everything inbetween in its 'proper' sequence on the 'body', no matter in which direction you spin it.  With the insinuation of the Bran time-travel stuff, however, we might now have to factor in a picture of an ouroboros that can coil upon itself (much as a higher-order molecule emerges from what was once a linear sequence) and tie itself in knots, so that for example two sites on the 'body' that were previously unrelated in space and time to one another might now paradoxically be adjacent.

I think it's possible that a recurring event might abut another event out of order due to the peeling back of the ouroboros dragon skin. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Your phrase which I've bolded 'going inside out for a cycle before returning to right side out' got me thinking that if GRRM's fable of ice and fire is an allegory for climate change, geophysical shifts, astronomical events like meteor impacts, mass extinctions and the like, as many have suggested, then perhaps the analogous 'unravelling' of the ward at the wall in 'real-world' nature might refer to the periodic geomagnetic reversals that have been shown to occur over time resulting in a polar reversal, i.e. a shift in the earth's polar axis, whereby in magnetic terms north becomes south, and east becomes west...

Spending time on Seams puns and wordplay thread, among others, has heightened my awareness of, and correspondingly lowered my threshold for, identifying GRRM's sneaky use of these allusive techniques.  So, with this in mind, could 'magic' be a pun on 'magnetic'?  

I do think Quaithe's words to Dany are directions on how to navigate the "polar reversal". I may need to use this term in my essay that I am preparing for Black Crow's Centennial series. He's kindly allowing me to explain my wheel of time theory, and I hope you will join in the feedback once it's posted. 

There could be a connection between magic and magnetic. I'm sure natural events seemed magical to primitive man.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Moreover, extreme shifts in the earth's magnetic field have been speculatively linked to climate shifts like glaciation, cosmic impacts and other catastrophic events, including volcanic hyperactivity ('the Doom?'), although the evidence for a 'doomsday' scenario in this context outside literature seems far from definitive. Despite inconclusive evidence for a causal link of this kind, the phenomenon of geomagnetic reversal has ignited the popular imagination, particularly considering its frequency appears to be increasing when viewed in a deep-time perspective, sparking an inevitable interest in doomsday hypotheses, particularly in the sci-fi community with which GRRM would have been au fait.  

A geomagnetic reversal does not occur as a straight flip, but rather as an unraveling in fits and starts which can be quite unpredictable and unstable

The Doom hasn't been explained in the text, but I am wondering if it wasn't the fire dissolving equivalent of what may happen when the Wall swirls away? Maybe Valyria had it's own "Wall" that held back fire magic and it burned away?

I continue to be amazed at GRRM's scope of knowledge and I wouldn't be surprised if he's familiar with magnetic fields, climate shifts, glaciation, cosmic impacts and more. He's drawn inspiration from seemingly hundreds of sources for this series.

Westeros already had a geomagnetic reversal and I've been trying to pin point when it happened and what caused it. If you believe that the titled chapters are indeed inversion chapters, have read a few of them and then read my essays to compare, then you may already have an inkling what's coming.  Once you get the hang of picking out the inversions, it's like reading a second book, and you begin to start looking at the details like they're prophecy. If you know what happened in the past in Westeros, you can guess the inverted future.

I am getting most of my ideas from deciphering the inversion chapters, and then discussing what I've found with others. The discussions have led to breakthroughs. Many people have contributed to the wheel of time/ouroboros theory by helping me out with what they know on specific topics, like @LynnS 's knowledge about the Wall, @WeaselPie 's Bran the Timelord thread, @DarkSister1001 's Euron the Abomination thread,  @Macgregor of the North 's Thoughts on Bran/Brandon the Builder thread, among many, many, many more.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

According to the geomagnetic shift/polar reversal analogy, the earth's magnetic field is generated by the earth's dynamic iron core, so a shift thereof which can be construed as a symbolic 'opening'/'unlocking' could indeed be configured as an 'iron gate' swinging down below!  Magnetism derives from, and is held in place by an iron foundation (although this is paradoxically always in flux). Wildly extrapolating, perhaps GRRM's concept of magic like magnetism hinges on iron!  After all, iron swords, like compass needles, are used as wards on tombs to ensure the proper alignment between the cardinal polarities of the living and the dead.  Your focus on the 'Ironborn' as the civilization on the ascendance is interesting, in light of the mag(net)ic iron connection.  Is there some significance to their name?

I really love this! Iron hinges, iron swords, iron bars and gates...and then to also have scientific evidence that magnetism hinges on iron! Can I use this in my essay?

Regarding the Ironborn. I don't believe it is ever explained why they are called the Ironborn, however I do have a few ideas. IMO the Ironborn were First Men that were purposely separated and warded from the mainland by the hammer of waters, which I believe was directed at them. The text says that the hammer of waters broke the Arm of Dorne, but it also created the Iron Islands. They were left with rocky outcroppings with no means of supporting themselves from what little land that was left. The ward (iron) that was placed upon them was meant to kill them, and they nearly drowned, but they rose up and learned a new way to live. There must have been some trees left on their islands to build ships, because they turned into a seafaring people, raiding the mainland to survive. They were reborn from the iron ward that was meant to kill them, and they rose again harder and stronger since what is already dead can never die.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

I like the E-W spinning in reverse as a time reversal idea!  According to the geomagnetic shift analogy I explored above, however, neither time nor the earth need run backwards; all you need is a polar reversal, and strange phenomena start popping up in unlikely places, e.g. one might see the aurora in the tropics.

Regarding the 'seas drying up', this has happened before in geological time when so-called 'land bridges' were created (in an ice age, water becomes locked up in ice, leaving some areas relatively in drought), which many theorize facilitated human migration across land masses that were previously separated. It's interesting to think that 'when the seas dry up,' and humanity is in extremis, paradoxically people are brought together, geographically speaking at least: bridges replace walls..!

I am glad to have made a new convert! Not only has east become west, but it has caused people to have false or mixed memories. For example, if east is now west Braavos and Bear Island have traded places. This could explain why Dany has memories of the house with the red door as having great wooden carved beams like the keep on Bear Island. Was she ever there, or since east has become west has there been a layering of a "possible past" over the top of her actual past? Second example is Ned's fever dream. He compares real events to the dream, meaning he understands that some things in the dream are different, and he has strange symbolic aspects like the blue rose petals, now inject LynnS's explanation about the blue chink in the Wall as symbolizing the tunnel the Night's Watch has unwittingly carved through the Wall, and her excellent reasoning that the blue petals could be the wights and white walkers entering the north bringing death.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Hello Sinbold,  Thank you for reading my post.  That was my take at first also or as Brad Stark says; boy that's impossible; the sun is never going to do that.  So it's impossible, Dany is never having another child.  It really depends on how you frame prophecies.   If you agree that prophecy can be about event past, present and future; then consider actually seeing the sun moving backwards through the sky.  We see this in cinema all the time to represent days passing very quickly one sun rise after another or representing the passage of time.  A sunrise running in reverse would represent time moving backwards.  Think about running a time lapse film backwards and watching a tree sprout and grow in front of your eyes and reverse it to see the tree shrink back to the acorn.  We already have an example of this in Clash of King:

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had is brother always had three eyes?

Not always came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This occurs at the Fist of the First Men when weirBran talks to Jon in his Ghost dream.  This is before Bran has passed the Black Gate.  Jon and Bran encounter each other again after Jon and the Wildlings climb the Wall and Bran see him through Summer make his escape from the Wildlings back to Castle Black syncing up their timelines.  So wierBan communicated with Jon before he reached Bloodraven's cave,  in Bran's future and Jon's past.

I think Dany is due for another set of prophecies or visions when she reaches the Dothraki High Holy place and passes beneath the Shadow of the Mother of Mountains.  She may have a vision of the past, she might see the Wall built, the seas emptying to make a glacier in a reverse time lapse.  

That is my interpretation of the first two lines of that prophecy.  

Thanks for reading!

   

 

Reading your post made me realize that Bran watching the Winterfell tree in reverse should be included as more evidence for the reversal of time. 

[Brad Stark]

I assumed Iron born, iron price, iron islands, went back to first men raiding Andals.  First men worked bronze, but iron was superior.  If you wanted iron, you'd have to raid to steal it.

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

It also could suggest that the Hammer of the Waters didn't require a comet or calling up the oceans to inundate the land; but breaking the ice dams blocking large glacial lakes instead.

I agree, as this is exactly the cause of the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline which I've cited before as the model for the breaking of the Arm.